L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

The Bonehead of the Opera

OK, so in the great if oddly-plotted opera Il Trovatore the gypsy woman, Azucena, attempting to avenge her mother who was burnt at the stake by the count, steals the count’s infant son intending to toss the baby on her mother’s bonfire. But, in a moment of confusion, accidentally throws her own baby on the fire instead. (Work with me here. I’m not making this up!)

Boneheaded move, you say? But even Azucena was not so boneheaded as to drive 30 minutes into Seattle before remembering that the opera tickets were still affixed to the fridge door with a New Brunswick souvenir moose magnet.

The spousal unit was remarkably restrained as I exited the freeway, swung around and headed back home where we canceled dinner reservations, grabbed the tickets and a quick bite and headed out into the night once again. Like Leonora, we arrived at the castle in the nick of time and we didn’t even have to drink poison to get in. But even so, it’s going to take a while to live this one down.

Thanks, S.B., for the terrific suggestion to bring spoons to tap along with the Anvil Chorus. I assure you the people around us found it most charming. It made a lovely accompaniment to the gentle snores of the elderly English gentleman seated to my right.

And for those of you who have not had the pleasure of seeing it, I give you:

LEGO IL TROVATORE!

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3

Act 4

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Tip of the Old Derby

A cyclist went down. In the 69 years that the Redmond Criterium has been running (and boy are their legs tired!), I don’t know how much biker skin has become incorporated into the pavement of downtown Redmond, but I imagine it’s enough to make a whole new biker.

The nation’s longest running bicycle race played out Saturday under a brilliant sun, surrounded the usual cheerful, small-town festivities. As an arts commissioner, I get to walk in our goofy little parade handing out fliers for the Redmond Summer Arts in the Parks series. (“Arts in the parks! Free concerts in the parks! Arts in the parks! Free concerts! Arts in the parks!” ) My friend and fellow commish, Latha Sambamurthi dresses me up for the parade each year and it’s a chance to feel like a Bollywood movie star for a few hours. I love it.

The festival booths run to chiropractic spinal exams, Kiwanis and dairies, the food runs to bricks of curly fries the size of the mayor, and the music runs to 60s-70s-80s covers, but there were two beer gardens and any day that ends with fireworks has something going for it.

It’s good to be reminded that fun can be had without wi-fi.

BTW, the biker who fell was seen walking about the festival later, apparently unconcerned that he was missing about a quarter acre of skin.

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Chocolate Radio

Through a series of unlikely coincidences, my song “Tango de Cacao” is going to be featured on KOPN 89.5 FM radio in Columbia, Missouri at 7 pm Central Time, Thursday May 28. It’s a show of songs by women about food. I don’t know any more than that. Listen live here: http://www.kopn.org/listen

Here are the lyrics:

Tango de Cacao Buy the MP3
© Eva Moon

When first I saw you in the window
You caught my eye and called me in
Was it fate that drew me to you
Into this candy story of sin?

Beneath your surface smooth and dark
Lies the promise of delight
I know to have you is my doom
But even so I’m yours tonight

I give in there is no cure
I can’t resist your sweet allure
Without you I’m incomplete
Though our love is bittersweet

Let the longing fill my cup
I drink to you in steaming sips
You are my sweet forbidden love
Your candy kisses stain my lips

You are my favorite obsession
I think about you day and night
You are the singular expression
Of my helpless indiscretion
It’s a force I cannot fight

I give in, there is not cure…

Oh, waiter. Yes, you. Would you please bring me the chocolate decadence cake? And I don’t need a fork…

Let them point at us and stare
As I revel in disgrace
Let them laugh, I don’t care
I only want another taste!

I give in there is no cure…

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Too Hip to Crotch Walk

I suspect Overheard In New York is playing games with us. Twice in one day they tossed out the term “crotch walk.” My natural assumption was that even though I’d never heard it, if I were to ask my kids they’d roll their eyes so far back in their heads they could watch their hair grow from the inside, sigh dramatically and wag their heads at the tragedy of having such a hopelessly dinosaurific mother. Where have you been?

But ossified or not, I was curious. I mean, you can imagine what it is, right? Well, it turns out that, as least as far as the internets know, crotch walking is still slang of the future. Some snooping around turned up very little - a couple of short, incoherent videos too dim to share here and none of which agreed. Is it walking with a hip thrust on each step? Strutting while grabbing your crotch? Gingerly stepping to avoid irritating a rash? It’s not even in Urban Dictionary yet.

I came across one source suggesting it’s a law-enforcement term for a particular type of shoplifting wherein a woman in a loose skirt grips items between her thighs and walks out. Apparently this is a common way to make off with whole hams and small appliances.

So what’s the deal? Is Overheard on that much of the bleeding edge? Did they overhear new slang or are they making it up? Could I make new slang? If I casually start inserting, oh, say “choxymoron” into blog posts and conversation, will it spread? Would I want to unleash such a word on an unsuspecting world?

The danger is slim. Despite years of flogging it, renown eludes me. Even my youtube video of Light the Fucking Candles is creeping glacially towards 2,000 views after nearly two months while a grainy security video of a teenager dropping a pizza has gotten 200,000 views in a single day. I do not have the knack for popular.

In any case, this post gives me a rare opportunity to feel hip enough to crotch walk from here to the post office with a box of fresh, homemade baklava for the person who comes up with the best definition of choxymoron.

And do watch out for a woman who can sashay casually down a street with an espresso maker between her thighs.

UPDATE: My kids assure me that they heard the term at least two years ago and it’s a stupid manner of leading each step with a pelvic thrust. Some self-crotch-grabbing may be included for emphasis. The term is derisive, in their opinion.

UPDATE 2: A youth golf coach friend says she sees this walk frequently among young men who wear those super-baggy jeans. If they walked in a normal upright posture, they’d never stay up. And the winner of the box of baklava (just baked today) is: Dreah.

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Is that a glowstick in your pocket?

Last week I was alerted to the existence of a fabulous thing: strings of tiny purple lights on sale at the Fred Meyer Halloween display. They’re about 5 feet long and run for hours on two AA batteries. I popped right over and bought one. I had no idea at all what on earth I would use it for but how could I resist? They even have a blink setting. You really never know when you might need something like that. I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

This weekend is the Redmond Digital Arts Festival. You can find out all about it on the festival website so I won’t go into the details here other than to say we’re off to a great start and you all should come to Redmond when we do it again next year. Seriously.

I was slated to work all day in the digital lounge - a large dark room with a number fascinating interactive installations and, sadly, Rock Band 2 on a 14-ft wide screen. Fortunately the 80s rock covers that were drummed into my head all afternoon were hammered out by the pounding techno DJ later in the evening.

Anyhoo, knowing I was going to be working in a dark room, I decided to make a sort of blinking purple tiara out of the light string. It worked great, but that wasn’t the half of it…

One of the most popular activities was an interactive light show created by Seattle artist Amir Stone. An infrared camera picked up lightsources - mostly glowsticks, though any source would do - and projected persistent images of the movements onto two 14′x10′ screens. The screen cleared for a new artistic endeavor every 60 seconds. It turns out that a purple light tiara makes fabulous noodly streaks of color on the screen - a terrific contrast to the broader glowstick paths.

It was all squiggles and swooshes until we discovered that a camera flash would capture a still image of the people in line of the projector. That’s me below (and my tiara squiggles all over the middle).

Nine hours of it was about enough though.

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Sunday in the Park (and elsewhere)

I think I saw every single piece of artwork on display in the Tate Museum today. I could happily have spent longer there if there had been more to see. What was there was both fascinating and beautifully curated. I became of fan of Francis Picabia. He tried on artistic movements like new shirts - constantly changing, impossible to label. And he did it at least partly as an artistic statement in itself - ridiculing the pretentious seriousness of the art circles he moved in.

He even reinvented his own paintings, painting new elements over old, changing styles, content, meaning.

I have the same tendencies in my own work. I’ve been criticized for not clinging to a particular style - not being classifiable. There is some justification to the critique. One style can take years to fully comprehend and master. But I can’t resist the lure of exploration and many of my songs deliberately poke fun at the originals. I also reinvent old songs. “Circle of Stuff” started life as a rock anthem. Today it is a lively samba. The lyrics for “Spice it Up” were recently written over as the more controversial “Brazilian Wax” (though both versions have the theme of keeping sex adventurous over time). But enough about me.

After exhausting the Tate we moved operations to the Victoria & Albert Museum in search of artifacts from the 13th century for book research. We found a few interesting things - including beautiful reproductions of the tombs of King John and Eleanor of Aquitaine (one of the most interesting women ever).

A longish walk back to the hotel through Hyde Park and a brief respite before looking for dinner.

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Deploring the Rings

In case you missed it, they made a musical of Lord of the Rings. And if you did miss it, you might possibly want to just keep it that way. We saw it last night at the Drury Lane Theatre by Covent Garden in London’s West End.

My first reaction, on hearing the attempt had been made was, “wait… what?” How could the sweeping story that took three long novels be told in a single sitting - with song and dance numbers? I’m here to tell you, it hasn’t happened so far.

The story was so telescoped that, aside from a few tender moments between Frodo and Sam, the characters could do little more than shout, stentoriously declaim or give backstory. The acting was wooden - even amateurish in places (shame on you Elrond), even beyond the limitations of the script. In the best musicals, the songs either move the story forward (Cabaret, Chicago) or are musically so memorable as to be worth the stop (West Side Story). In the worse musicals, they are interruptions where everything stops so an obligatory song can be delivered. The songs in this show were not only forgettable (there was one nice one by Sam, longing to sit by the fireside) but committed the sin of stopping the story dead in its tracks every damn time.

The star of the show was the staging. The scale is staggering - a £1million, 40-ton rotating stage lifts and falls in 17 different sections, 50 actors, 19 musicians, 60 crew working behind the scenes for every performance, 504 costumes and 256 costume changes each show, for starters. The staging extends to the first balcony, where we were seated. There was smoke, lasers, orcs in the aisles. Pippin leapt directly over my seat. Galadriel descending into Lothlorian was pure Sarah-Brightman-meets-Cirque-du-Soleil-over-the-top. We left the theatre humming the sets. (I wish I could say that line was original, but it was too apt not to steal)

However, a friend pointed out to me that she liked the thought of being the filling in a Boromir/Faramir sandwich. It’s a tasty thought.

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Museumed

Lord, I wish my body could figure out when to sleep!

Spent the whole morning at the British Museum where they have the Rosetta Freaking Stone and the Elgin Freaking Marbles. I was amazed at how little security there was. It’s wide open, no one checking bags. People walking amonst the priceless relics with backpacks and tote bags. Same at the National Gallery, where we whiled away the afternoon in the company of Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Monet and too many others to name.

We’re staying at the Rhodes Hotel just north of Hyde Park. The proprietor is a voluble Greek with bushy eyebrows (is there any other kind?) who badgered me into eating more breakfast than I had intended to and regaled us with stories of air conditioning installations while we charmed him with our tiny smattering of Greek. There’s no elevator and we’re on the third floor (which lists significantly to the right as you enter). The walls are decorated with amusingly rendered Greek friezes and there’s an actual model of the Parthenon suspended over the check in desk. Shades of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Couldn’t be more pleased!

Tonight we’ve got tickets to see The Lord of the Rings, the Musical. I can’t imagine how it’s possible to tell the story and sing the songs in under three hours, but soon I’ll know and I’ll pull no punches in my review tomorrow. Off to the theatah!

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If a Song Falls in the Forest

A recent chat with a friend turned to the subject of the nature of art. (Hey, every once in awhile I DO think about something besides sex and chocolate.) I have long held the opinion that art is a form of communication and, as such, takes two: the artist, to initiate creative expression and the observer, to be affected by it.

One of the first songs I ever wrote and performed publicly was an odd little piece called “Invisible Town.” I was perpetually surprised by the reactions it got. People loved to tell me what they thought the song was about. And usually, it was not even remotely related to what was in my mind when I wrote it. At first it was disconcerting. Was I not communicating? How could I take credit or responsibility, as the artist, for meanings I hadn’t meant? That’s when I started to realize that art is a collaboration between the artist and the audience.

A simple dictionary definition of art is “the product of human creativity.” I’ve also heard art defined as “intentionally created by artists.” But for me, a critical element is that it has to affect others - leave them changed in some way.

So what about canvasses that lie stacked in attics? Compositions that never grace a music stand? Poems tucked between the pages of old books? These things still have value - to the artist. But they are children, still waiting to leave the nest and become themselves.

Art informs us about our humanity, reminds us that we are not alone in the world, shows us all they ways we can be in the world. I don’t put artists on this pedestal - artists go about the work of expressing their own creativity for their own reasons. It’s in the sharing of art that real meaning arises. Even when it was not what the artist intended. Maybe especially when it wasn’t.

OK, next time it’s back to sex. Promise.

Or maybe chocolate.

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The whole show in 3.5

We had a great show at Egan’s Ballard Jam House last Saturday. Dashed in breathless and nearly late from playing Latin fusion at an Indian Independence Day festival (of all things!). The Jam House is one of my favorite places to play. The sound, the lights, the food and drink - it all comes together in a sweet, intimate setting. Well, except for the sirens that seem to go by outside the windows about every twelve minutes. I could do without that part. But hey. We found ourselves a film student to run the camera: Ashley Russell, a wee elf in a blue hoodie who managed to squeeze two and a half hours of video out of two hours of batteries.

Out of that, here’s the Cliff Notes version of the show. You can download the 18MB full-res QT video, or watch the YouTube version right now here:

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